q1

1. Evaluation Question 1
In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

2. Three act structure
1.Jenny had a difficult childhood and was bought up in a run down
area. At the age of 15, she decides to run away and refuses to ever
return. She moves to the city and marries a wealthy business man. To
make some easy money, Jenny sells a painting to a buyer. The buyer
then realises the painting is a fake and hires a hit-man to kill Jenny.
2.The hit-man follows Jenny around trying to ‘hunt her down’. Jenny is
soon to realise of this and this is where the chase begins.
3. Jenny manages to slip away and change her identity. She returns
home to her husband (the hit-man) who is unaware of Jenny being the
target. She realises this, so she continues to make him dinner but adds
poison to kill him.

3. We chose to produce a film trailer, poster and magazine cover to promote our
crime film ‘UNPAINTED PATH’.
We researched into other magazines techniques as well as other movie
posters and trailers, to see how they adapted their ideas into promoting their
film. We needed to do this research as we had never done this before and
needed research in order to carry out the task efficiently. We used all three of
these promoting techniques as a way of communicating with our audiences
to evaluate their thoughts about our film. We could then use this feedback to
improve in our future work.
To be able to establish our target audience of 15 and above, with an interest
for crime films, we wanted to include some iconography. This included ideas
from Kill Bill. For example, we used ‘twisted nerve’ one of the soundtracks
used in the film, as well as the split screen shot. Using bold yellow
backgrounds as well, was something similar to Kill Bill that we wanted to
include to show an element of Pastiche and potential hyper-reality.
We originally decided upon a three act structure as a group, but we did
change the ideas from when we first pitched them to the rest of our group.
This is because we were continually deciding upon different and better ideas
whilst filming.

4. We followed the typical film trailer conventions of a crime film. This was followed by adding camera shots that were
fast paced and high-resolution colour, allowing the audience to feel the ‘what happens next’ expectations that they
should do for this genre of film.
Our soundtracks were used to add suspension to our trailer, which then contrasted each other to add a slight element
of action.
All of our camera shots, sounds and titles were mainly influenced by Kill Bill and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. This allowed us to
use conventions from both films, ensuring we had covered all areas of a crime film.
As our film essentially followed the typical life of a couple, our costumes were ones that weren’t too fancy. They
wouldn’t be seen to be different for everyday life, yet when filming the busy shots in the middle of town, we mainly
focused on Jenny so that it was obvious who the main character was.
As most of our scenes were films in busy, built up areas, we felt that this followed the conventions of a typical crime
film as it included a chase which was necessary to film in somewhere easily distracting.
We also followed the conventions for a typical film trailer as we did not choose to have all the footage in a
chronological order. This made sense when looking at other trailers as they also do this and we wanted it to be similar
to these and to not give away too much of the narrative, but enough to entice the audience in.
However, we challenged the conventions of a typical Crime genre film as our ‘heroes’ appeal to both genders, which
then helps to widen our target audience appeal. We incorporated Post-Modern techniques in the way that our film
falls under the sub-genre/hybrid film of Crime Thriller. Although Post-Modern techniques can be quite popular
throughout crime films, it is also very well-known for a crime film to fall under two genres, creating a sub-genre. These
would be films with added humour, challenging conventions of a typical crime film. We slightly adapted this and over-
dramatised our film to add a slight element of humour, similar to the film Mr and Mrs Smith.

5. Our Distribution and Marketing
techniques
Miramax are a well known film distributor.
However, they haven’t recently distributed many
films; especially crime. They are well known for
Pulp Fiction (1994); Muriel’s Wedding (1995);
Trainspotting(1996); Kill Bill: Vol 1(2003) and Vol
2 (2004) and many other mainstream films.
However, more recently they have not been
distributing quite so many films, their most
recent well-known being Sin City: A Dame to Kill
for.

6. Film Trailer Conventions
Genre Conventions and Narrative: Our film features two main characters, a husband and a wife. Both
the characters play the antagonist role as well as the protagonist, leaving the audience questioning who
they prefer as neither character is better than the other. However, the female role in this film is
different to most other crime films, yet similar to Kill Bill as they both play the antagonist role. The
narrative follows both the theory from Roland Barthes and Levi Strauss. Strauss introduces the
‘Opposing structures Theory’ such as hero/villain, good/bad. Whereas Barthes, challenges the idea of a
narrative to have enigma codes like in Kill Bill with ‘Who is Bill’ and a Proairetic code, again in Kill Bill
with ‘shoot-out’ or ‘show-down’. We use both of these theories as we include the question of ‘What is
going to happen’ and the tag line of ‘get your guns ready’/ ‘showdown’.
Camera work/editing: Our shot types as well as editing techniques were done as close as possible as
something that would be used in a crime thriller genre film. We tried to follow mainly the editing
techniques that were used in Kill Bill. These include fast paced shots and split screen effects as well as
adding cartoon effect images to incorporate post-modernism. At the beginning of our trailer, we use
time remapping to rewind the footage of the female role walking down the corridor. This falls into place
with the voice over, but would still make sense without sense and fits perfectly with the rest of the
trailer.
Time remapping shot

7. Examples
These are some
screen shots
from our trailer
on YouTube.
They show the
fast paced, comic
effect and split
screen shots that
we used for our
trailer.

8. Film Trailer Conventions
Sound and Titles: Our sounds were found on
www.bensound.com as well as our main
background music from ‘Twisted Nerve’. They
were both edgy and a little ‘unnerving’ which
was the theme we were looking for as this is
similar to most crime films.